In early December 2017, I had the honor of delivering one of the keynote speeches at the DESY MicroTCA Workshop in Hamburg, Germany. The workshop was well-attended, as 183 participants from 25 institutes and 23 companies gathered to share the latest developments in MicroTCA hardware, software, and applications. The pre-workshops, held December 4 and 5, included a tutorial for MTCA.4 beginners, interoperability testing opportunities, and an introduction to ChimeraTK, a popular software suite for managing MicroTCA (and other) components. The industrial exhibition was also well attended, with 14 companies present.

The annual PICMG resource guide showcases how important PICMG [PCI Industrial Computer Manufacturers Group] standards have been and continue to be to the embedded computing industry. It represents all of the group's standards and reflects the multitude of offerings showcased at this year's Embedded World show in Nuremburg, Germany.

Although the Internet of Things (IoT) has emerged in every market segment, its implementation varies widely. In the Industrial IoT (IIoT), for example, a much more robust, reliable set of technologies is required than in the consumer world. Here, technology standards organizations will play an important role in ensuring that safety-critical IIoT systems can be developed at the lowest cost, fastest time to market, and minimize the low-level software engineering burden.

PICMG standards such as CompactPCI have been leveraged for years in aerospace and defense applications such as communications, avionics, and satellites. Today, the fastest growing standard from the PICMG experts is COM Express, thanks to its flexibility and reduced size, weight, and power (SWaP) characteristics.

What continues to make PICMG successful as a standards body is our community of members and your collaboration in pursuit of innovation. As officers of PICMG, our mission is to shepherd and encourage that collaboration, making sure that the process moves along and that member voices are heard. The standard development process within PICMG is flexible - members can prepare pre-work of a potential standard before coming to PICMG (CompactPCI was introduced this way) or develop them within open committees under the aegis of PICMG. It's all about collaboration. The value of open standards adoption is that it helps the industry by enabling interoperability, multivendor solutions, flexibility, and reduced time to market for end users.

Recently, the U.S.-based Internet service provider OneWeb ordered 900 satellites to provide additional global broadband. Knowing that this volume is more than half of the total 1,400 satellites already in orbit, and knowing that the cost for sending one into space is about $100 million, the industry needs to start thinking about new technologies that could help manage the mass of satellites that must be produced every year.

In the current environment of "open source everything," is there still a role for PICMG and open specifications? Doug Sandy, vice president of technology and CTO for PICMG, explores the past and future of PICMG within the emerging industry landscape.

The ATCA [advanced telecommunications computing architecture] standard was adopted at the end of 2002; since that time, billions of dollars of ATCA-based products have shipped worldwide. The bulk of those products have gone into demanding high-end telecom applications worldwide, but there are numerous other applications that can benefit from the proven architectural strengths of ATCA.

Leaders of PICMG say that their standards continue to grow in adoption across the globe, with COM Express making huge inroads in Asia and Internet of Things (IoT) markets while CompactPCI Serial grows in acceptance in Europe.

Last year ended with the loss of Joe Pavlat, who successfully led this organization for over 20 years. He worked with members to establish PICMG as a global leader in open standards for embedded computing. We are grateful for his service and will continue to build and improve the organization he helped found.

PICMG is a nonprofit consortium of companies and organizations that collaboratively develop open standards for high-performance telecommunications, military, industrial, and general-purpose embedded computing applications.